Cell 211 – review

The prison genre, known in the trade as "the Big House movie" from the title of a seminal film of 1930, has spread from Hollywood around the world. This excellent Spanish picture has all the traditional ingredients: the fair but weak governor, the contrasted good and bad warders, the charismatic convict leader (knockout performance from Luis Tosar, famously menacing in Michael Mann's Miami Vice), the old lag, the slimy informer, the destructive riot, and the familiar message that the trouble is due to overcrowding, penny-pinching and the lack of either creative work or serious attempts at rehabilitation. The clever twist here (a variation on the opening of the Robert Redford film Brubaker) is that the sympathetic new warder, the 30-year-old Juan Oliver, is accidentally stranded inside during a preliminary tour of the premises when the riot occurs and has to pretend to be a hard-as-nails murderer in order to survive a lynching. A second twist is that the jail is temporary host to four Eta terrorists whose delicate status makes them potential hostages and political pawns.

Cell 211 (Celda 211)Production year: 2009Country: Rest of the worldCert (UK): 18Runtime: 112 minsDirectors: Daniel MonzonCast: Alberto Ammann, Antonio Resines, Luis Tosar, Manuel Moron, Marta EturaMore on this film

First-time director Monzon keeps the screws tightened in every sense, as well as avoiding conventional rhetoric and sentimentality. Jail pictures are the product of democratic societies, and such a Spanish movie would have been unthinkable under Franco. Oddly, one figure you might have expected in a Big House picture from a Catholic country is missing here – the prison chaplain, famously celebrated in Lenny Bruce's hilarious sketch "Father Flotsky's Triumph".

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